In Search Of...Thai Spicy

Most adamantly not for me; I am a terrible spice wimp. Much as I see my need for mild-ish food to be something of a personality defect, I simply cannot eat hot things without much suffering. No, this search is on behalf of my husband, who has been luckless in his hunt for a really hot Pad Thai or similar.

Recently he was in a bike accident, which mercifully left him without serious injury, but with lingering pain. This pain has led him to seek out ever-hotter food for its analgesic qualities, and we've med several trips to various Thai restaurants: so far, Sticky Rice, Spoon, and Thai Pastry. Each time he has requested Thai spicy only to be presented with a plate of food that even I could eat without difficulty. Since this has happened several times, at several restaurants, I thought perhaps we might be phrasing the request incorrectly. How, then, does a patron indicate (even through a language barrier) that he would like it hot, no really, HOT, like the kind of hot that induces sweating? He's said that in so many words, yet dinner is never even close to hot enough.

The Thai is "pedt-pedt," I believe, for "Thai-heat level."

I've never had to ask for Thai food that way, tho'.

Generally, I just request "Thai hot."

There is an interesting phenomenon(which I haven't tested because the Thai I've encountered in Indianapolis is wack) in Indy where most Thai restaurants offer a listed spectrum of heat(1-5 chiles for example) and some places even go so far as to charge a dollar extra per dish for those wanting, "Thai spicy."

As for Chicago, I've found ordering off the Thai menu at TAC ensures one receives the appropriate chile-heat(if applicable) for any given dish.

I can sympathize with your frustration, and I'm sorry about the accident.

Based on your description, I'm wondering whether perhaps you're not ordering the best dish by asking for pad thai? Because Pad Thai (like many other noodle dishes in Thai food, for that matter) is not normally a spicy dish. Have you tried ordering other dishes and asking for them "very hot spicy", or only pad thai? For example, one of my favorite Thai dishes is panang curry, which doesn't have a lot of what we think of curry flavor but has some red pepper hotness and coconut milk flavors to it. Another dish more susceptible to spiciness is tom kha gai, a soup made of chicken, coconut milk, red pepper, lemongrass, and galanga (sometimes with cilantro and/or mushrooms). Both of these are dishes that should be served at least somewhat hot (spicy) and I would expect them to be prepared even more so on request. And both of them are available at most Thai restaurants. At my favorite Thai restaurant, Thai Sookdee in Evanston, if you don't specify hotness both of these come out reasonably spicy (maybe 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10) and they are happy to make them either hotter or milder on request.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:Most adamantly not for me; I am a terrible spice wimp. Much as I see my need for mild-ish food to be something of a personality defect, I simply cannot eat hot things without much suffering. No, this search is on behalf of my husband, who has been luckless in his hunt for a really hot Pad Thai or similar.

Recently he was in a bike accident, which mercifully left him without serious injury, but with lingering pain. This pain has led him to seek out ever-hotter food for its analgesic qualities, and we've med several trips to various Thai restaurants: so far, Sticky Rice, Spoon, and Thai Pastry. Each time he has requested Thai spicy only to be presented with a plate of food that even I could eat without difficulty. Since this has happened several times, at several restaurants, I thought perhaps we might be phrasing the request incorrectly. How, then, does a patron indicate (even through a language barrier) that he would like it hot, no really, HOT, like the kind of hot that induces sweating? He's said that in so many words, yet dinner is never even close to hot enough.

I didn't read thoroughly...I agree with the above poster: pad thai isn't typically spicy to begin with(yes, I suppose of the billions of versions of pad thai someone might throw in a handful of ratshit chiles). By only ordering pad thai(and asking for it "spicy") you might also be signaling that you are a Thai cuisine neophyte(them's the breaks) and, no matter how you plead, the waitstaff may dismiss your request.

I'm going to agree with nsxtasy. The VERY first thing I thought when reading the op was "Why would you order pad thai if you want something spicy?" It is normally a dish with a sweet/salty profile. Another noodle dish like a Pad Seiu, Pad Woon Sen, or Lard Nar might net you better results when asking for them to be Thai hot, or Thai spicy. I would also strongly suggest you try a red, green, or panang curry, or a khaosoy if you have not already. IF you ask for any of these Thai hot or Thai spicy, and the place did not deliver the goods, it's time to move on to a new joint. I do find that many ethnic places will assume you have no idea what you are talking about when you say you'd like something fiery hot - probably because of people who couldn't handle standard spiced dishes and complained of the heat levels. If you re-iterate how spicy you'd like your order several times, you'll probably be ok. One thing I will do is ask for an item "extra -spicy." Then, when the order is repeated, I will reiterate "EXTRA spicy please."

For pure heat, I think the spiciest Thai food I've had has been from Ruby of Siam. They have an appetizer called one-bite salad which doesn't skimp on the capsaicin. Also, any entree I've ordered there and insisted on Thai spicy has arrived appropriately so; the cashew/rice entree is one particular spicy favorite.

True that Pad Thai is not typically hot: but my husband has an almost fetishistic love for it, and he prefers it very hot. I realize it is something of a gateway entree (after all, my mom loves it, so it can't be too weird) and he is pretty adventurous with food, but his first love is Pad Thai. So there it is.

He does like Pad See Ew at times, perhaps we could try that instead?

Neither Pad Thai nor Pad Se Eiw are normally spicy in my experience, so it would seem to be almost asking them to add a new ingredient, not just ratchet up the existing heat level. That may explain why the request never works out. Don't know for sure.
Many Thai restaurants use a little pepper icon to denote hot dishes on the menu, and certainly they would entertain a request to jack that up to 11 for you. I'm afraid I can't immediately summon up a specific place, but it's a fairly common menu convention. Try some new places, or check out menus on-line and see if you can find some places to try that use the menu icon.
The 'meat with basil' dish is on almost every menu and is one that actually involves a pretty high heat level, which is oddly omitted from the description. I learned the hard way back in the day when the little place (long gone) under the Bryn Mawr red line stop made heart-stopping version.
Something that might be a sort of band-aid approach would be to order Pad Thai and add Sriracha sauce at the table to get some heat. Of course that really changes the balance/profile of the whole dish, but that's pretty much built into the idea of super hot pad thai to begin with.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:True that Pad Thai is not typically hot: but my husband has an almost fetishistic love for it, and he prefers it very hot. I realize it is something of a gateway entree (after all, my mom loves it, so it can't be too weird) and he is pretty adventurous with food, but his first love is Pad Thai. So there it is.

He does like Pad See Ew at times, perhaps we could try that instead?

Try asking for the little condiment tray that many Thai restaurants have. Usually, there is some ground chili powder included that you can sprinkle on top of whatever your order to heat it up a bit if that's your preference (I often do this). However, I'll agree with other posters above that ordering Pad Thai and asking for it spicy is probably setting off alarm bells among the staff and any food you order is probably going to come out of the kitchen with a moderate (at most) spice level. I know for a fact that the spice level at Spoon and Sticky Rice, for example, can be quite high, if you order correctly. It also may not hurt to visit a few times so the staff gets to know you and understand that when you say hot, you mean it.

Another tip might be to order everything but the Pad Thai first, then when the food starts to be delivered to the table say something like, "Oh, by the way, could you bring us an order of Pad Thai, too...and make it spicy."

Meat with basil is supposed to be hot? Really? I'm surprised because the duck with holy basil is one of my favorite things at Sticky Rice, and needless to say, tain't hot. I will need to keep this in mind if I order it elsewhere.

I haven't been to Sticky Rice and am not familiar with the duck dish. But it sounds different from the ubiquitous basil one I was thinking of. It's usually in the "on rice" column (as opposed to w/ noodles column), and it's lined up with all the usual suspects: X with ginger, X with garlic, etc.
For example Spoon's non-secret gringo menu lists "spicy basil leaves" as well as what appears to be a noodle version of the same routine, "spicy crazy noodles."
Good luck.

Get nam prik num at Sticky Rice or larb at Spoon or somtum thai at TAC. Alternate mouthfuls of that with the pad thai. Problem solved.

Su at PS Bangkok will be more than happy to translate whatever you request quite literally to the kitchen staff:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... 86b311bb5e

I have had old-fashioned-thermometer-exploding Thai from PSB on request, including the papaya, pineapple, and banana blossom (seasonal) salads. They also do a searing beef jungle curry (again, order "Thai-hot, Thai-style" to specify both heat level and authentic balance of ingredients). This is not one-note heat, either - a nice mix of dried and fresh chilis and chili pastes / sauces.

Aroma Thai on W. Randolph (which does kind of suck most of the time), does have a 1-6 scale for all dishes. 6 is getting impressively hot, admittedly.

Santander wrote:Aroma Thai on W. Randolph (which does kind of suck most of the time), does have a 1-6 scale for all dishes. 6 is getting impressively hot, admittedly.

Really? I found Aroma to be one of the more bland places in town(despite the fact that they have a warning on their menu saying that you can't send back dishes ordered over a certain level). Aroma was located around the corner from my office until I moved and despite making several visits when they first opened and even telling the waitress I wanted spice level 12 (which isn't even on the menu) to reinforce my wish for spicy, I was never able to get much more than a slight tingle out of anything they served. I eventually quit going altogether because it was so unsatisfying.

mrbarolo wrote:Many Thai restaurants use a little pepper icon to denote hot dishes on the menu

Yup. As you can see on the menu on the Thai Sookdee website, they use one pepper for dishes that are somewhat spicy, and two icons for dishes that are very spicy.

I forgot to mention, one of the very best, most delicious dishes I've had at various Thai restaurants is a whole fried red snapper in a sauce with red and green chilis. It's also often one of the very spiciest dishes I've had. It usually stands out because the price is typically $15-25, much higher than the other dishes, but it's oh so worth it! Oh, it's also not the easiest dish to eat, because you have to pick at it with a fork to pull away the morsels of fish while leaving behind the bones. It's shown (as dish number 29) as MP (market price) on the dine-in menu on the Sticky Rice website (although I haven't had theirs, FWIW). (There's also a lower-priced, filet version that I've never gotten.) This is a dish that most Thai restaurants, asked to prepare it extra hot, should be able to accomplish to your husband's liking.

I think the problem in not getting your food hot enough is that asking for pad thai extra hot just doesn't register with the kitchen. Sort of like if you went to an American restaurant and asked for them to prepare a hamburger "extra sweet".

YMMV, as I suggested with the "suck" comment. I don't love the food, but I did get them to deliver high piquancy on several occasions with a "6," but from your comment in the other thread, it seems like they may have redone the scale at some point. My experiences were largely in 2004 and 2005, right after the restaurant changed over from a Hi Ricky, and again in November of last year. They had a satay sampler which included goat satay right after opening, the only place I've seen this item. This recent Yelp comment (March 2008) backs up the 1-6 scale:

Cheap, yummy and FAST. I love the Aroma Pad Thai (glass noodles with chicken and shrimp) and the Red Curry. Everything is available on a spiciness scale of 1-6. I'm a 6 girl.

Again, this is not creative cuisine. But if you want some chefs to mindlessly make up a searing pad thai or pad sieu, they have the disclaimer, and have been able to challenge my palate on clear request.

Now if you want great food that's actually supposed to be spicy, try PSB or TAC.

Santander wrote:YMMV, as I suggested with the "suck" comment. I don't love the food, but I did get them to deliver high piquancy on several occasions with a "6,"

Well, everyone's spice tolerance is different, and I'll admit that I do have a higher threshold than most, so that could account for our different impressions of this place.

Thai Aree will produce food that is plenty hot. Start with medium, which is hotter than the hot at many Thai restaurants, and add some combination of the table condiments if needed. At the same time they do some mild dishes that please even my chili-averse wife. We were sorry when they ceased being open for lunch and switched to Manee Thai when we wanted Thai for lunch in that general area. Unfortunately, as noted in the Openings and Closings thread, Manee Thai was totally destroyed by fire last night.

Thai Aree
3592 N Milwaukee
Chicago
773-725-6751

I would think that for the most part, noodle dishes aren't going to provide the blazing heat he's looking for. My guess is that asking for it "Thai spicy" doesn't equate to "four alarm" but rather "please serve it as spicy as the chef recommends", which in the case of many dishes, isn't all that spicy.

I'd say to get the pad thai that he loves, then order a papaya salad "very spicy" as a side dish.

Best,
Michael

ekreider wrote:Thai Aree will produce food that is plenty hot. Start with medium, which is hotter than the hot at many Thai restaurants, and add some combination of the table condiments if needed. At the same time they do some mild dishes that please even my chili-averse wife. We were sorry when they ceased being open for lunch and switched to Manee Thai when we wanted Thai for lunch in that general area. Unfortunately, as noted in the Openings and Closings thread, Manee Thai was totally destroyed by fire last night.

Thai Aree
3592 N Milwaukee
Chicago
773-725-6751

Agree with Thai Aree. Once ordered the beef salad "hot" and it left me sweaty and in tears.

For pure heat, I think the spiciest Thai food I've had has been from Ruby of Siam. They have an appetizer called one-bite salad which doesn't skimp on the capsaicin. Also, any entree I've ordered there and insisted on Thai spicy has arrived appropriately so; the cashew/rice entree is one particular spicy favorite.

Totally agree. I am a life-long chilehead, and certain of Ruby's dishes verge on the painful even for me - even the tom yum soup is blistering. Good eats. <--imagine wisps of steam coming out of the earS

NOTE: my experience is limited to the Evanston location.

Well, everyone's spice tolerance is different, and I'll admit that I do have a higher threshold than most, so that could account for our different impressions of this place.

I doubt it.

More likely, the chef(s) on the days I went actually fulfilled the request, whether that was due to strong communciation on my part, or the waiter's. I am not encouraging a revisit since I think the basic food is uninspired and not always well-prepared, but I maintain my original point that they can and will do spicy in Thai terms if challenged firmly.

Spoon Thai's banana blossom salad is generally not considered hot. However Erik M and I once were doing some research on how their banana blossom salad was constructed. The key question was whether or not there was chili-jam in their preparation. This question triggered Spoon to add a tad more chili-jam to the potion to emphasize its presence. It was the only time I found the banana blossom salad almost inedible, though Erik went to town with delight.

I am no chilihead, however I have noticed my tolerance level is rising. I guess it is the company I keep.

Regards,

I too need to near-injure myself to enjoy thai food. I have been pleasantly surprised with Opart Thai. They not only make some of the most ridiculous Panang Curry that I've ever had. . but if you ask nicely, they will turn up the heat.

I had some curry fried rice at Opart that tasted like it had been sprayed with mace. (awesome)

edgewaterglutton wrote:I too need to near-injure myself to enjoy thai food. I have been pleasantly surprised with Opart Thai. They not only make some of the most ridiculous Panang Curry that I've ever had. . but if you ask nicely, they will turn up the heat.

I had some curry fried rice at Opart that tasted like it had been sprayed with mace. (awesome)

Agreed. As well as being a longtime favorite restaurant of mine, Opart has no problem cranking it up for farang.

Of all the Thai restaurant that claims to make dishes very hot there is two that I know of personally. One in San Antonio, Texas called Thai Chili Oriental Restaurant where they can make your dish with up to 100 chili peppers or more (they actually have a contest of the most chili ever eaten in a dish-see weblink below), in Chicago - go to Asian Mix Cafe - Where the food goes from Hot to extra Hot, to extra extra hot, and extra extra extra hot - and all you have to do is ask for the Habanero chili in your dish. The habanero is not native to Thai cuisine or any Asian culture - but the owners had added this item to satisfy their Indian and Carribean customers. The cooks says that the Habanero is much to hot for Thai people.

If your Husband want it HOT - give Asian Mix Cafe a call. They will also delivery prettty much anywhere on the Northside.

Asian Mix Cafe:
http://www.asianmix.foodler.com

Thai Chili Oriental Restaurant in San Antonio, Tx
http://www.thaichili.net/home.htm

How Spicy Do You Like Your Thai Food?

Thai Chili specializes in providing the right spice level to satisfy each of our guests different tastes. When dining with us, your server wil ask you to choose a spice level between 1-10. But why stop at 10? Did you know that Chef Chai will prepare your food as spicy as you want it. Why not try a 15 or 20 level? Or how about a 300! Over the years, Thai Chili has continually held a competition between our guests to find out who exactactly can eat the spiciest dish prepared by Chef Chai. Our current winner ate a dish spiced at 1110! (See photos below.) Do you think you can beat his record? Why not come in and give it a try. It's quite possible your picture will featured on the Wall of Fame in the Thai Chili lobby.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:Meat with basil is supposed to be hot? Really? I'm surprised because the duck with holy basil is one of my favorite things at Sticky Rice, and needless to say, tain't hot. I will need to keep this in mind if I order it elsewhere.

The holy basil dishes that mrbarolo mentioned are the ones that are called something along the lines of gai/moo/nua/phed (chicken/pork/beef/duck) pad ga-prao, or any of a number of other transliterations (pud gaprow, kaprow, etc.)

At any rate, that's my baseline spicy dish for a Thai restaurant (as well as being one of the simplest, most beautiful dishes mankind has come up with.) Most are happy to pump up the heat to mind-blowing levels if you can convince them you really want it hot. Sometimes this takes pleading, sometimes it takes repeat visits, and sometimes, if you're lucky and the server believes you know what you're doing or is feeling particularly sadistic, you get the heat level on the first shot.

Binko wrote:

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:Meat with basil is supposed to be hot? Really? I'm surprised because the duck with holy basil is one of my favorite things at Sticky Rice, and needless to say, tain't hot. I will need to keep this in mind if I order it elsewhere.

The holy basil dishes that mrbarolo mentioned are the ones that are called something along the lines of gai/moo/nua/phed (chicken/pork/beef/duck) pad ga-prao, or any of a number of other transliterations (pud gaprow, kaprow, etc.)

At any rate, that's my baseline spicy dish for a Thai restaurant (as well as being one of the simplest, most beautiful dishes mankind has come up with.) Most are happy to pump up the heat to mind-blowing levels if you can convince them you really want it hot. Sometimes this takes pleading, sometimes it takes repeat visits, and sometimes, if you're lucky and the server believes you know what you're doing or is feeling particularly sadistic, you get the heat level on the first shot.

I love this dish myself, too. Look them in the eye and ask for it "Thai spicy" at Ruby of Siam in Skokie. They will happily accomodate you.

=R=

Ruby of Siam
9420 Skokie Blvd.
Skokie, IL 60076
847 675-7008

We went to Sticky Rice last weekend, and my husband asked for his dish (cannot for the life of me recall what, but it wasn't Pad Thai this time) Thai spicy. It was just a touch hotter than my mild shrimp in chili jam, which was outstanding, by the way.

Perhaps a field trip to Skokie is in order this weekend! We're in the wilds of West Rogers Park, so it isn't far at all.

Beware. I've found that Ruby of Siam is highly inconsistent. You can order the same dish on multiple visits, and one time it will be great, another time the spicy level is totally different (in either direction), yet another time the dish arrives with a puddle of grease on top. This is based on numerous visits to the Evanston location, only one or two to the one in Skokie.